1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to text display apparatus displaying text on the screen of the display means having the resolution fixed, and more particularly, to a text display apparatus that can display characters of one text page along with the cursor on the full area of the screen, and a method of displaying the text thereof.
2. Description of the Background Art
Recently, improvement in display resolution and reduction in cost are seen in liquid crystal display panels and personal display panels or the like. Also in the field of personal computers, portable types have been developed.
There are many kinds of software in the market used in personal computers, including those developed in the past. However, the resolution of the display screen corresponding to the software developed in the past is generally lower than that of the display screen corresponding to the newly developed software in accordance with the advance in the technique of the display medium. In the case of displaying text, the display character size corresponding to the software developed in the past is small compared with that of the newly developed softwares. When one page of text is displayed using a newly developed display panel, which is generated by a software having a text display screen with a resolution of the display panel lower than that of the newly developed display panel, the display area will be smaller than the screen size of the display panel. This results in a non-display area in the screen, leading to the inconvenience that the entire screen is not used efficiently.
FIG. 8 is a diagram for explaining the development of a non-display area. When one page of text (character size 8.times.8 dots, 80.times.25 lines) set to correspond to a display panel of 640.times.200 dots developed in the past is displayed using a display panel having a display resolution of 640.times.480 dots, the display area is 5/12 of the entire screen, and the remaining 7/12 of the entire screen is a non-display area.
The method of storing character font data other than 8.times.8 dots, for example, character font data of 8.times.19 dots, in a character generator, and building a program specifying the character size of 8.times.19 dots is considered to display text on the entire screen.
However, the specification of the character size is carried out by the kernel package (referred to as an application program hereinafter) for character display corresponding to the resolution of the display panel. The application program corresponds to the resolution of the newly developed display panel. The compatibility of the application program prevents rewriting from the user side of the manufacturers of personal computers and word processors. The contents of the program are not disclosed and are kept private.
Furthermore, the cursor showing the position of the next character input is displayed in text display. The display position of the cursor is specified, for example, by the 10th row and 5th character, and the line number where the cursor is to be displayed within the character box (the bottom 8th line in the character box, for example) by the application program.
It will be necessary to modify the application program to change the display position of the cursor associated with the change in the above mentioned character size, as in the case where the display position of the cursor is altered to the bottom 19th line in the character box. However, the change of the cursor display position was unachievable because the modification of the application program was not possible.